Great picture Reggie. Jupiter's looking huge at the moment.

 

Cool shot Reggie!

 

Nice image, Reggie. Unfortunately, if it's not a tropical storm or hurricane it's rain and clouds down here.

Ed

 

Sounds fun. By about 04:00 it's too low for me.

 

We got tropical force winds in Miami. Only had to clean up the yard. My older daughter lives outside of Orlando and got hit by a Cat 1. She had some water intrude in one room. Other than that, and the ground being saturated with standing water, she's OK. I feel for the people on the West coast, having gone through the worst of Andrew in '92 and losing everything we had.

Thanks for asking, Reggie.

Ed

 

@Orion25 Yes I have 1 sketch so far in another thread here, I can't wait to look at mars again with the 12" mirror, to get more details!

it should happen soon!

 

Last night it seemed clear down here, so I pulled out the 10" Dob, some eyepieces, and my planetary camera setup.

Visually, the first thing that I noticed is how bright Jupiter is compared to previous apparitions. Even with filters the details and color were washed out. Keep in mind the light polluted mess I live in, which contrary to common belief, does affect observing and imaging of planets and the moon.

I also tried imaging. The planet images were... The LP killed the colors, and the dust in the atmosphere wiped out detail. I'm going to try cleaning them up, but from experience I'm sure the trash can is going to be well fed.

I also tried Saturn with the 10". It was cool that I could see the planet and several of the moons, but the view was only so-so.

From my experience last night, I think I'm putting the 10" Dob away and pulling out the 6" Mak.

It's still early for me in the planetary season, so I'm hoping things will improve as the planets rise higher in the sky.

Ed

 

Jupiter is unusually bright at the moment. It's 49 arc seconds and 99% illuminated. I've not had a really decent view of it for weeks. Although when I did (a while ago) it's often been spectacular. I think it's just too close at the moment. A few weeks ago it was smaller and easier to get any detail or colour. Have you tried a polarising filter Ed? They can often kill a lot of glare.

 

Mak, I used my Baader Neodymium filter with IR/UV cut. I was thinking about a filter to cut down the light while observing. My Polarizer filter may have done the trick. For now, I think I'm putting the 10" Dob away and breaking out the 6" Mak and TV-85.

I finished my image from last night and will post it shortly - I'm disappointed with it.

Ed

 

I ended up stacking a polariser with other filters near the opposition itself. Although I think the conditions were a bit against me. At this time of the year here there can be a lot of humidity in the atmosphere. Which also creates dewing problems. By late October it's usually too cold to dew lol.

 

Yes, thanks Reggie. I'd read something like that. I'm pretty convinced a lot of the problems with excess glare when observing Jupiter at the moment are directly attributed to this. Ed's been having problems as well. At first I thought it was the humidity and conditions as it's getting damper here and occasionally the jet stream covers the entire country. These things are bound to have some effect but I didn't realise the glare would be so detrimental to observation. It's a distinct possibility that as Jupiter moves further away viewing will get better. Like I told Ed, a few weeks ago when the conditions were good, I had some spectacular views of the GRS and equatorial belts.

 

I wonder if geoengineering could be part of the problem also, spraying of particles in the atmosphere. It's just a very wild theory but I wonder.